![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scriveynerTitle: Chasing Sunsets (Chapter 3)
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith, James
Rating: M
Length: 4193
Summary: "Shiro, you don't even need to be at most of those meetings. Ditch. Come back to bed." Keith wiggled enough that he could extract one arm from the sheets and indicated the space underneath it. "The Galaxy Garrison ran itself just fine before we got back to Earth and they'll run it fine for a few more hours all alone."
The insistent bzz bzz bzz of a communicator buried somewhere under clothing finally reached Keith and he groaned, smacking the first stretch of Shiro he could find without opening his eyes. "Your alarm's going off," he mumbled, burying his face deeper in the pillow and making an attempt to pass back out before he could be engaged further.
Shiro let out a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, but didn't move.
The communicator ceased buzzing for a moment, before it started up a new, slightly louder cycle of its alarm. Keith groaned louder this time and squinted open his eyes, staring at the broad, scarred expanse of Shiro's back. "Get up," he said, and put his palm against Shiro's shoulder blade, giving him an encouraging push.
Shiro grunted again but refused to wake.
Keith narrowed his eyes. He wiggled slightly closer, and then put both his palms against Shiro's back and gave him a significant shove.
Keith wasn't as big, physically, as Shiro; but he was damn strong, especially when he wanted to go back to sleep and someone's pre-dawn alarm was going the fuck off. Shiro let out a surprised squawk as he found himself forcibly ejected from the bed. However, Keith made a minor miscalculation, because half the sheets went with Shiro. He clawed uselessly at the covers, but Shiro was entangled in them and already overboard, so it was mostly futile. "I'm up," Shiro mumbled from the floor, without moving further. "I'm up."
After a moment, the annoying buzzing stopped, and Keith dropped his head back into his pillow. Then, the motion-activated lights started to come up, and he groaned again, burying his face in the pillow and grabbing for covers he couldn't reach.
The captain's chambers on the Atlas were nothing special; but compared to the sparse pilot's quarters on board the Castleship it was frankly like being in a luxury hotel. There was an actual bedroom, with a main room and office that Shiro would use to conduct official business once they launched, but for the moment was exclusive and private and just about the only space where they could spend time together now that the Garrison was actively paying attention to them.
The bedroom didn't have any exterior windows, the chambers being deep in the heart of the ship, but there were a panel of view screens that could be activated in both the bedroom and office to serve as a live view outside. Shiro had kept both dark so far - the Atlas was currently in the spaceship equivalent to dry dock as the last of its repairs and modifications were completed, so the exterior view would have been nothing but scaffolding and workers, anyway.
(Not that the workers could see in, but it felt weird anyway.)
Shiro sat down on the edge of the bed, yawning, and scrolling through his feed to check his schedule for the day. Keith recovered the sheets and made a nest for himself to block out the daylight, burrowing back into bed and stealing Shiro's pillow as well as a consolation prize.
Shiro looked over his shoulder at Keith. "I will roll you out of bed," he threatened, and Keith extracted a particular finger just for Shiro.
"I'm not the one who scheduled meetings at the ass-crack of dawn," Keith said, refusing to open his eyes.
"No, but as the leader of Voltron you should be present for at least some of them."
Keith mumbled something that might have been a falsetto repetition of some of Shiro's words directly into the pillow, before rolling his head slightly. "Shiro, you don't even need to be at most of those meetings. Ditch. Come back to bed." Keith wiggled enough that he could extract one arm from the sheets and indicated the space underneath it. "The Galaxy Garrison ran itself just fine before we got back to Earth and they'll run it fine for a few more hours all alone. C'mon."
"Half the leadership is dead, Keith."
"What, and you want to take over? Leave it to Iverson." Keith yawned loudly, and finally his head emerged from below the covers. "I was up late drinking, I have a hangover. If you want to go be the boss go ahead, just leave me here to die in peace."
Shiro laughed and leaned back on his hand, reaching to tousle Keith's hair. "Now you're just being melodramatic. Lance is rubbing off on you."
Keith glared at Shiro, batting his hand away and sitting up, finally. Shiro smiled at him fondly, his silver hair tousled very attractively. "You always know just what to say," he muttered, and scrubbed the palm of his hand over his face. "Lance is not rubbing off on me."
"I know." Shiro said, as their eyes met. Keith let out a long sigh, and shuffled over to the side of the bed, bumping his shoulder into Shiro's left one as he did so. Shiro laughed at his grumbling and slid his arm over Keith's shoulders, and kissed the side of his head affectionately. "I'll even let you have first dibs on the shower."
#
"Two Flight, pull it together," Grayson's voice cut across the comm and, after a moment's delay the straggling MFEs caught up, forming a tight diamond formation. James watched the dots on the radar, moving too fast for the flight deck's visual comms to track as they blasted past the Garrison's airspace, exalting in the sheer speed the new Mark-2's could demonstrate in atmospheric flight. James could relate; he and Kinkade had been up at dawn in the Mark-2's, racing the MFEs across the curve of the upper atmosphere and trying to find the the starfighter's limits. They hadn't even come close - the alien technology augmented by Altean design was simply something else.
"Cadets," James said into the comm. "This is a simple strafing exercise; you'll need to drop your speed for this as I really don't want to see you - or any of these very expensive machines - splattered into the side of a mountain." A chorus of acknowledgments filtered in from the pilots in the air, and he watched the radar as they all reduced speed beautifully, without dropping formation. Considering the circumstances, they flew incredibly well as a unit, and he was suitably impressed at their parade formation. The true test was yet to come, however, as this was the first time they were engaging in a live fire exercise.
"You'll notice several pings on your radar. Those are not your strafing targets - they are going to be dragging your strafing targets. Ten points assigned for each successful hit, one hundred points for each target destroyed. Twenty points off for each friendly fire impact. Your weapons are dialed down to ensure you won't damage each other or the craft dragging your targets, but it will register. Any questions?"
Each pilot checked in with a 'no, sir!' and James leaned forward, one hand on the radar station. "Good hunting, cadets."
#
The four MFE-Ares Mark-2s spread out from the parade formation, skimming the dusty desert at a high rate of speed. Neither ship that sat on their radar was visible just yet, they were moving at an equally high rate of speed just beyond visual scope and had started to split off. "I've painted the friendlies as Gray One and Gray Two," Grayson said, flipping toggles and concentrating on her flight path. "Seven, you and Eight break off and pursue Gray Two, Six and I will take Gray One."
"Copy that," Hazama's voice crackled through the comms, and Two Flight split, each after their own target.
The ping on her radar that had been painted as Gray One abruptly stopped accelerating, doubling back and heading straight toward them, overshooting the MFEs at a high rate of speed. Grayson craned her neck, helmet cracking against the back of her seat as she tried to get a visual on either the friendly or their strafing targets. "What the hell? Six, break off, I don't know what Gray One is playing at."
The MFEs split, Grayson rolling to starboard and Peshk to port, and as they rolled their target split the air between the two fightercraft, moving so fast it was almost a blur.
Almost a blur.
The craft was red and so much larger than the MFEs, and as Grayson pulled her MFE out of its loop the Red Lion of Voltron flew lazily ahead of them, long gray tail swishing through the air casually as easily two dozen small lighted drones trailed it, carried in a shiny fibrasilk netting. The blue, blinking lights on the drones all suddenly started blinking an angry red, and the radar began to beep insistently as it filled with targets.
"Whiskers," Peshk said as she resumed position on Grayson's wing. "It's Voltron!"
There was no response on the comm from the Red Lion, but the fibrasilk netting released, spreading the drones - and the Red Lion turned a tight flip in the air before shooting straight up into the sky, the drones following it without quite as much speed. "Oh, is that the way we're gonna play this?" Grayson said, one hand on her targeting HUD and the other on her flight stick as she narrowed the convergence point on the plasma guns. Without any other signal she yanked her flight stick back, stomping on the rudder pedals and switching directions, zeroing in on the first few straggling drones.
"Five!" Peshk said, but Grayson wasn't paying any attention, opening the throttle to full and racing to catch up with the cloud of targets tagged onto the tail of the Red Lion. They had spread out pretty evenly, but with the way the Paladin was flying the Lion they followed every juke and loop, and if a shot was timed wrong it would easily light up a friendly instead of a drone.
This was going to be interesting.
"Five, we have two MFEs on an intercept course," Peshk reported in, as Grayson fired off the first volley of low-intensity plasma weapons. The plasma sprayed across several of the outlying drones, painting several as hits and at least two destroyed. "They're Mark-1's."
"What?" Grayson kept her flight stick locked tight and spared a quick glance at her aft display. Six was trailing well behind, having lost her wing when she pulled the inverted maneuver to keep on the Lion's six, but there were two other MFEs on her radar now. Grayson opened her comms to a wide broadcast range instead. "Attention unidentified MFEs, this is a live fire training exercise," she said, half an eye on her target and the other half on her HUD. "You need to disengage and return to base immediately."
"Negative, Ares Five," an unfamiliar voice said, as a target lock whined in her cockpit. Grayson swore and twitched her flight stick, yawing the craft and rolling to break the lock.
"Six!" she barked into the shielded comm line.
"Kinda busy at the moment boss," Peshk said, and then yelped "whiskers!" again, as a loud tone squealed through the comm line.
"Ares Six is disabled and out of the exercise," one of the two unidentified MFEs said. Grayson glanced out her cockpit and saw Six, the white plated armor splattered with green from the training rounds. When she tried to punch Peshk on the comm again there was nothing but feedback, the shielded line had to have been disabled from the Atlas.
Well, she could think of a few words more flavorful than whiskers.
Grayson stepped on the rudder, spinning the MFE and shooting after the first of the two enemy combatants. She flipped her targeting computer from the drones to the craft, and after a split-second realization that she was no longer tailing the Red Lion the craft inverted and darted back the way it had come. Grayson rolled onto its tail, the MFE Mark-2 had a much greater maneuverability score than the original prototype - and a higher speed threshold. There was no way that the Mark-1 would be able to outpace her in a flat speed run.
Her target lock went red as she squeezed off several shots, painting the tail of the MFE with the plasma weapon, but then an additional target lock squealed as the Mark-1's wing locked on to her. Twisting out of the way, Grayson heard the target lock cut off, and then her comm line opened again. "Five, Six, you're both vaped. Get back to the hangar for debrief."
#
Alvarez kicked out one of the chairs at the table in the pilot's canteen. Peshk looked over at him, drinking something clear from a pouch, elbow on the table and muzzle in hand. Grayson had her head in her arms, face down on the table. "So, who got vaped?"
Peshk and Grayson both raised their hands; Gotou at the other table did as well. Alvarez preened, gloating slightly, as Nxar walked around the table to seat himself on Peshk's other side. Grayson didn't even bother to lift her head, transitioning her hand to a single finger salute aimed more or less in Alvarez's direction.
"It was dirty pool having enemy MFEs come out of nowhere like that," Gotou muttered, the heels of his boots on the table. "This was supposed to just be a strafing and target exercise."
"Was it, though?" Peshk said. "I don't think it was."
"Why would Lieutenant Griffin lie to us?" Hazama wondered, leaning back in his chair and looking at the others with wide blue eyes.
"Let's see," Alvarez said. "How many of us got vaped? Four? Out of six hotshot pilots? Them's bad odds."
"Three," Gotou said, indicating Hazama with his head. "This idiot didn't get vaped, somehow."
"Still. Bad odds for a new squadron. If it were a real battle and the Galra Empire got the drop on us, that's half the squadron gone up in so much space dust."
Grayson lifted her head suddenly. "We weren't watching our six," she said suddenly, as if it was a revelation.
"What? I'm right here."
"What?"
Alvarez shook his head as Grayson and Peshk looked at each other in confusion. "No shit, Grayson. That's why you got vaped."
"Not you, Peshk, I meant our six as in," Grayson gestured with her arms, as if they were on a clock. "Eleven, ten..." she pointed behind herself. "Six o'clock."
"It's a military term, Peshk," Gotou said, as the canine alien was watching her wing and looking completely lost. "Based on the face of an earth clock. I don't know how you time-keep, but that's how we identify danger coming at us from ahead..." he gave Alvarez a considering look. "Or behind."
Peshk blinked her eyes slowly and then nodded her head. "That makes more sense," she said, and Grayson gave her a hopeless shrug.
"We weren't watching our six," Gotou agreed. "We were too focused on what we thought our target was that we flew right into a trap."
"Maybe you four did," Alvarez indicated them with his hand. "But Nxar and I smelled a trap ten klicks off." He grinned a little at the vocal scoffs he received in return.
Nxar tilted his head, twitching an ear as he frowned at Alvarez. "But you would have been vaped as well if I neglected to share my data with you in preparation for the incoming MFEs," he said pointedly, and Alvarez deflated slightly.
"I think the point here," Hazama said, "is that we all really suck at communicating with our wings." He smacked Gotou's boots and, with a long-suffering groan, Gotou dropped his feet from the table's top. "We aren't working as a team, either. Not in wings and not in flights."
"It was only me and Nxar in our run, we didn't even have a full flight."
"That's not - that's not exactly my point, Alvarez."
"If the whole squadron was up there, we could have communicated the danger," Peshk said. "Fed our scanners back to the others and cleared the way for them to achieve the objective."
"Who says we can't do that now?"
Everyone looked at Nxar, who had a thoughtful look on his face. Grayson looked around. "Whose MFEs are being used for Three Flight's run?"
Alvarez pointed to himself. "Ours. And the Lieutenant's, too, since they didn't fly with us for this exercise." He got a suspicious look on his face. "Why? "
"I think I know what Five's getting at," Gotou said, standing up. "You have a plan?"
"It depends," Grayson said. "How good are you at distractions?"
#
"Huh," Leifsdottir said, and then didn't say anything else.
James glanced over to where she sat at the monitoring station. The final two wings of MFEs had just launched, the pilots reporting green and having been given their exercise instructions, and it was the first time that Leif had said anything other than to report as normal. That ... was cause for concern. "What is it?"
"There have been twenty-nine anomalous data transfers since we began our exercise this morning, so I monitored the shortwave transmissions. Eleven of them were simply family radio chatter on prohibited channels, thirteen were downloads of explicit pornography via unauthorized wireless devices-"
"Leif. "
"The final five broadcasts came from our flight hangar in the last five minutes," Leifsdottir concluded, unperturbed.
"From ... our flight hangar?" James said, looking over to the security feeds. No one was really monitoring them, as they were grounded and not in any danger.
"They were encoded, burst transmissions." Leifsdottir began to type quickly, focusing on the data. "Four comm transmissions and one sensor package. I can have it decrypted in thirty seconds."
Oh . "No, that won't be necessary," James said, returning his attention to the sensors. "I think this strafing run might be a little more exciting."
#
Noor opened the comm frequency between the four MFEs flying in formation. "Three Flight, everyone clear?"
"Package downloaded and delivered, Nine," Ten reported in.
"How are we going to split Gray Wing?"
"We're not, Eleven." Noor looked at his radar, the sensor package already overlaying his own data. The friendly that had been earmarked as Gray One by Five's data was somewhere above them. "Eleven, Twelve, you take the drones trailing Gray One. We'll cover you; then we'll deal with Gray Two."
"Copy That, Nine."
Carson and Lujay's MFEs zipped over Noor's to take the lead as the Red Lion suddenly dove in front of them, trailed by a net full of drones. Just as the briefing notes from Three and Five's sensor data had said, the net disintegrated and the drones spread, pulled along by the backwash of the Red Lion's thrusters. "Engaging drone targets," Eleven reported, and the two MFEs zeroed in on the drone swarm.
"Two unidentified unfriendlies on radar," Ten reported. "Seven o'clock, coming in hot."
"Let's give them a warm welcome, Ten," Noor said, glancing to his radar. "On my mark, break and engage." The proximity alert spun down as the Mark-1's got into range. "Three, two - mark!"
Ares Nine and Ten rolled, dropping off Twelve and Eleven's tail and splitting off. Immediately the two enemy MFEs followed, each tagging one of the pilots. Nine's target lock screamed as he juked his fighter, narrowly missing the spray of low-intensity fire. He stomped a rudder pedal and yanked the flight stick, spiraling the MFE upward and daring his pursuit to follow in a tight corkscrew. If they wanted a demonstration of his evasive maneuvers, then they were going to get one.
#
Shiro looked over the training report and laughed. "They circumvented the training exercise?" he said, reading over the scores. "That explains how a single wing obliterated all the training drones in one pass." He was seated behind his makeshift desk, and although the tiny office hadn't had a lot of furniture in it to begin with, it was empty save now for the desk, the computer and the chair Shiro currently occupied. "Very well done, I think."
James nodded his head once, although he didn't look pleased. "I didn't prohibit them from discussing the exercise after its completion, although maybe I should have."
"Well, even if it was an unintended consequence, the end result was some well-orchestrated teamwork and thinking outside the box in order to circumvent the exercise in the first place. Not a bad result, either way." He put the data pad down on his desk and cracked his neck, and then looked up at James, who was still frowning. "Somehow, I don't think you're too happy about it."
"It wasn't the original goal of the training exercise," he said, and then sighed. "I want to put three of them on report, they broke into the top-level encrypted channels to transmit the message in the first place."
"Did anyone get hurt?" Shiro asked .
"No, sir."
"Then I don't think that's necessary. Besides, the poor showing for the first few wings is punishment enough, until they level out their scores I'm sure that they're buying a lot of drinks for their fellows." Shiro leaned in his chair as the door to his office opened, and then he sighed and said, "don't bring that thing in here again, Lance."
Lance was still in his Paladin armor, and he was carrying one of Pidge's drones in his arms. Outside of an MFE the drone was roughly the size of a medium dog and probably weighed a decent chunk of change, not that James had fiddled with the Olkari technology.
"I'm keeping this one," Lance announced, and then looked around before realizing that there wasn't any place to set the thing down in Shiro's office. "Where'd your couch go? Did you finally decide to get it cleaned? I told Keith you should get it cleaned, who knows who did what on it before you two started-" Lance's attention drifted across James, and he abruptly stopped, mid-sentence. "Oh. Hey, James."
"Lance," Shiro said, with a long-suffering sigh. "Again, with that thing?"
"I dunno, I thought I'd get the drone working now that it's been shot to pieces and the kids could have it. Maybe get a vidcomm installed and then they can have as much Uncle Lance time as they want." Lance shrugged as well he could still holding the drone in his arms.
James eyed Lance slightly, unsure of what part to address. "Thank you for your help with the training exercises today," he said.
"Don't mention it," Lance said cheerfully. "Red was getting anxious being grounded constantly, it was nice to get out and let her stretch her legs for a bit. Not that we did much other than fly circles around the MFEs," he added. "Ryan and Nadia got to do all the fun stuff. Maybe next time we could sortie, that would be fun." He huffed and hauled the drone up, balancing it against the corner of Shiro's desk. Shiro just looked at him. "Where's Keith?"
"I haven't seen him," Shiro said. "I was in the middle of something here, Lance."
James shook his head. "That's okay, sir, I think I got your point. I need to get to work, anyway, Leif and the others are waiting on me." He saluted Shiro, and after a moment Shiro nodded, dismissing him; and he watched James excuse himself out the door.
"Huh," Lance said, folding his arms atop the drone, still balanced between his body and the edge of Shiro's desk. He looked from the door to Shiro. "Can't believe he still doesn't realize you and Keith are boning."
Shiro flushed red. "Lance."
"What? It's true. Either that or you're sleeping together in the same bed and not hitting that, which would be tragic." Lance tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I should ask Keith."
"Lance, please get out of my office. I do have actual work to do."
Lance shrugged and hauled the drone back into his arms. "Just keep an eye on him, that's all I'm saying," he said. "James totally has a thing for Keith, just look at the way he twitches whenever Keith gets mentioned."
"James has a thing for Keith?" Shiro said, and looked back to the door, a frown crossing his features. "You sure?"
"Hey, am I ever wrong?" Lance said cheerfully, and when he realized Shiro was giving him a flat look, added, "Don't answer that. Either he's got a thing for Keith or it's a thing for you, and Mr. Chain-of-Command doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would go all-in on fraternization but hey, who am I to judge? Anyway, gotta go find Hunk, he promised he'd help me reprogram this beast." Lance wiggled slightly in place, like he was considering trying to shift the drone's weight to one arm to give Shiro a wave, changed his mind, and instead hauled the tech out the door.
Shiro stared as the door closed behind Lance, and then let out a long breath, running his hand through his hair before returning his attention to the data on his screen.
Three days, until launch.
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith, James
Rating: M
Length: 4193
Summary: "Shiro, you don't even need to be at most of those meetings. Ditch. Come back to bed." Keith wiggled enough that he could extract one arm from the sheets and indicated the space underneath it. "The Galaxy Garrison ran itself just fine before we got back to Earth and they'll run it fine for a few more hours all alone."
The insistent bzz bzz bzz of a communicator buried somewhere under clothing finally reached Keith and he groaned, smacking the first stretch of Shiro he could find without opening his eyes. "Your alarm's going off," he mumbled, burying his face deeper in the pillow and making an attempt to pass back out before he could be engaged further.
Shiro let out a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, but didn't move.
The communicator ceased buzzing for a moment, before it started up a new, slightly louder cycle of its alarm. Keith groaned louder this time and squinted open his eyes, staring at the broad, scarred expanse of Shiro's back. "Get up," he said, and put his palm against Shiro's shoulder blade, giving him an encouraging push.
Shiro grunted again but refused to wake.
Keith narrowed his eyes. He wiggled slightly closer, and then put both his palms against Shiro's back and gave him a significant shove.
Keith wasn't as big, physically, as Shiro; but he was damn strong, especially when he wanted to go back to sleep and someone's pre-dawn alarm was going the fuck off. Shiro let out a surprised squawk as he found himself forcibly ejected from the bed. However, Keith made a minor miscalculation, because half the sheets went with Shiro. He clawed uselessly at the covers, but Shiro was entangled in them and already overboard, so it was mostly futile. "I'm up," Shiro mumbled from the floor, without moving further. "I'm up."
After a moment, the annoying buzzing stopped, and Keith dropped his head back into his pillow. Then, the motion-activated lights started to come up, and he groaned again, burying his face in the pillow and grabbing for covers he couldn't reach.
The captain's chambers on the Atlas were nothing special; but compared to the sparse pilot's quarters on board the Castleship it was frankly like being in a luxury hotel. There was an actual bedroom, with a main room and office that Shiro would use to conduct official business once they launched, but for the moment was exclusive and private and just about the only space where they could spend time together now that the Garrison was actively paying attention to them.
The bedroom didn't have any exterior windows, the chambers being deep in the heart of the ship, but there were a panel of view screens that could be activated in both the bedroom and office to serve as a live view outside. Shiro had kept both dark so far - the Atlas was currently in the spaceship equivalent to dry dock as the last of its repairs and modifications were completed, so the exterior view would have been nothing but scaffolding and workers, anyway.
(Not that the workers could see in, but it felt weird anyway.)
Shiro sat down on the edge of the bed, yawning, and scrolling through his feed to check his schedule for the day. Keith recovered the sheets and made a nest for himself to block out the daylight, burrowing back into bed and stealing Shiro's pillow as well as a consolation prize.
Shiro looked over his shoulder at Keith. "I will roll you out of bed," he threatened, and Keith extracted a particular finger just for Shiro.
"I'm not the one who scheduled meetings at the ass-crack of dawn," Keith said, refusing to open his eyes.
"No, but as the leader of Voltron you should be present for at least some of them."
Keith mumbled something that might have been a falsetto repetition of some of Shiro's words directly into the pillow, before rolling his head slightly. "Shiro, you don't even need to be at most of those meetings. Ditch. Come back to bed." Keith wiggled enough that he could extract one arm from the sheets and indicated the space underneath it. "The Galaxy Garrison ran itself just fine before we got back to Earth and they'll run it fine for a few more hours all alone. C'mon."
"Half the leadership is dead, Keith."
"What, and you want to take over? Leave it to Iverson." Keith yawned loudly, and finally his head emerged from below the covers. "I was up late drinking, I have a hangover. If you want to go be the boss go ahead, just leave me here to die in peace."
Shiro laughed and leaned back on his hand, reaching to tousle Keith's hair. "Now you're just being melodramatic. Lance is rubbing off on you."
Keith glared at Shiro, batting his hand away and sitting up, finally. Shiro smiled at him fondly, his silver hair tousled very attractively. "You always know just what to say," he muttered, and scrubbed the palm of his hand over his face. "Lance is not rubbing off on me."
"I know." Shiro said, as their eyes met. Keith let out a long sigh, and shuffled over to the side of the bed, bumping his shoulder into Shiro's left one as he did so. Shiro laughed at his grumbling and slid his arm over Keith's shoulders, and kissed the side of his head affectionately. "I'll even let you have first dibs on the shower."
"Two Flight, pull it together," Grayson's voice cut across the comm and, after a moment's delay the straggling MFEs caught up, forming a tight diamond formation. James watched the dots on the radar, moving too fast for the flight deck's visual comms to track as they blasted past the Garrison's airspace, exalting in the sheer speed the new Mark-2's could demonstrate in atmospheric flight. James could relate; he and Kinkade had been up at dawn in the Mark-2's, racing the MFEs across the curve of the upper atmosphere and trying to find the the starfighter's limits. They hadn't even come close - the alien technology augmented by Altean design was simply something else.
"Cadets," James said into the comm. "This is a simple strafing exercise; you'll need to drop your speed for this as I really don't want to see you - or any of these very expensive machines - splattered into the side of a mountain." A chorus of acknowledgments filtered in from the pilots in the air, and he watched the radar as they all reduced speed beautifully, without dropping formation. Considering the circumstances, they flew incredibly well as a unit, and he was suitably impressed at their parade formation. The true test was yet to come, however, as this was the first time they were engaging in a live fire exercise.
"You'll notice several pings on your radar. Those are not your strafing targets - they are going to be dragging your strafing targets. Ten points assigned for each successful hit, one hundred points for each target destroyed. Twenty points off for each friendly fire impact. Your weapons are dialed down to ensure you won't damage each other or the craft dragging your targets, but it will register. Any questions?"
Each pilot checked in with a 'no, sir!' and James leaned forward, one hand on the radar station. "Good hunting, cadets."
The four MFE-Ares Mark-2s spread out from the parade formation, skimming the dusty desert at a high rate of speed. Neither ship that sat on their radar was visible just yet, they were moving at an equally high rate of speed just beyond visual scope and had started to split off. "I've painted the friendlies as Gray One and Gray Two," Grayson said, flipping toggles and concentrating on her flight path. "Seven, you and Eight break off and pursue Gray Two, Six and I will take Gray One."
"Copy that," Hazama's voice crackled through the comms, and Two Flight split, each after their own target.
The ping on her radar that had been painted as Gray One abruptly stopped accelerating, doubling back and heading straight toward them, overshooting the MFEs at a high rate of speed. Grayson craned her neck, helmet cracking against the back of her seat as she tried to get a visual on either the friendly or their strafing targets. "What the hell? Six, break off, I don't know what Gray One is playing at."
The MFEs split, Grayson rolling to starboard and Peshk to port, and as they rolled their target split the air between the two fightercraft, moving so fast it was almost a blur.
Almost a blur.
The craft was red and so much larger than the MFEs, and as Grayson pulled her MFE out of its loop the Red Lion of Voltron flew lazily ahead of them, long gray tail swishing through the air casually as easily two dozen small lighted drones trailed it, carried in a shiny fibrasilk netting. The blue, blinking lights on the drones all suddenly started blinking an angry red, and the radar began to beep insistently as it filled with targets.
"Whiskers," Peshk said as she resumed position on Grayson's wing. "It's Voltron!"
There was no response on the comm from the Red Lion, but the fibrasilk netting released, spreading the drones - and the Red Lion turned a tight flip in the air before shooting straight up into the sky, the drones following it without quite as much speed. "Oh, is that the way we're gonna play this?" Grayson said, one hand on her targeting HUD and the other on her flight stick as she narrowed the convergence point on the plasma guns. Without any other signal she yanked her flight stick back, stomping on the rudder pedals and switching directions, zeroing in on the first few straggling drones.
"Five!" Peshk said, but Grayson wasn't paying any attention, opening the throttle to full and racing to catch up with the cloud of targets tagged onto the tail of the Red Lion. They had spread out pretty evenly, but with the way the Paladin was flying the Lion they followed every juke and loop, and if a shot was timed wrong it would easily light up a friendly instead of a drone.
This was going to be interesting.
"Five, we have two MFEs on an intercept course," Peshk reported in, as Grayson fired off the first volley of low-intensity plasma weapons. The plasma sprayed across several of the outlying drones, painting several as hits and at least two destroyed. "They're Mark-1's."
"What?" Grayson kept her flight stick locked tight and spared a quick glance at her aft display. Six was trailing well behind, having lost her wing when she pulled the inverted maneuver to keep on the Lion's six, but there were two other MFEs on her radar now. Grayson opened her comms to a wide broadcast range instead. "Attention unidentified MFEs, this is a live fire training exercise," she said, half an eye on her target and the other half on her HUD. "You need to disengage and return to base immediately."
"Negative, Ares Five," an unfamiliar voice said, as a target lock whined in her cockpit. Grayson swore and twitched her flight stick, yawing the craft and rolling to break the lock.
"Six!" she barked into the shielded comm line.
"Kinda busy at the moment boss," Peshk said, and then yelped "whiskers!" again, as a loud tone squealed through the comm line.
"Ares Six is disabled and out of the exercise," one of the two unidentified MFEs said. Grayson glanced out her cockpit and saw Six, the white plated armor splattered with green from the training rounds. When she tried to punch Peshk on the comm again there was nothing but feedback, the shielded line had to have been disabled from the Atlas.
Well, she could think of a few words more flavorful than whiskers.
Grayson stepped on the rudder, spinning the MFE and shooting after the first of the two enemy combatants. She flipped her targeting computer from the drones to the craft, and after a split-second realization that she was no longer tailing the Red Lion the craft inverted and darted back the way it had come. Grayson rolled onto its tail, the MFE Mark-2 had a much greater maneuverability score than the original prototype - and a higher speed threshold. There was no way that the Mark-1 would be able to outpace her in a flat speed run.
Her target lock went red as she squeezed off several shots, painting the tail of the MFE with the plasma weapon, but then an additional target lock squealed as the Mark-1's wing locked on to her. Twisting out of the way, Grayson heard the target lock cut off, and then her comm line opened again. "Five, Six, you're both vaped. Get back to the hangar for debrief."
Alvarez kicked out one of the chairs at the table in the pilot's canteen. Peshk looked over at him, drinking something clear from a pouch, elbow on the table and muzzle in hand. Grayson had her head in her arms, face down on the table. "So, who got vaped?"
Peshk and Grayson both raised their hands; Gotou at the other table did as well. Alvarez preened, gloating slightly, as Nxar walked around the table to seat himself on Peshk's other side. Grayson didn't even bother to lift her head, transitioning her hand to a single finger salute aimed more or less in Alvarez's direction.
"It was dirty pool having enemy MFEs come out of nowhere like that," Gotou muttered, the heels of his boots on the table. "This was supposed to just be a strafing and target exercise."
"Was it, though?" Peshk said. "I don't think it was."
"Why would Lieutenant Griffin lie to us?" Hazama wondered, leaning back in his chair and looking at the others with wide blue eyes.
"Let's see," Alvarez said. "How many of us got vaped? Four? Out of six hotshot pilots? Them's bad odds."
"Three," Gotou said, indicating Hazama with his head. "This idiot didn't get vaped, somehow."
"Still. Bad odds for a new squadron. If it were a real battle and the Galra Empire got the drop on us, that's half the squadron gone up in so much space dust."
Grayson lifted her head suddenly. "We weren't watching our six," she said suddenly, as if it was a revelation.
"What? I'm right here."
"What?"
Alvarez shook his head as Grayson and Peshk looked at each other in confusion. "No shit, Grayson. That's why you got vaped."
"Not you, Peshk, I meant our six as in," Grayson gestured with her arms, as if they were on a clock. "Eleven, ten..." she pointed behind herself. "Six o'clock."
"It's a military term, Peshk," Gotou said, as the canine alien was watching her wing and looking completely lost. "Based on the face of an earth clock. I don't know how you time-keep, but that's how we identify danger coming at us from ahead..." he gave Alvarez a considering look. "Or behind."
Peshk blinked her eyes slowly and then nodded her head. "That makes more sense," she said, and Grayson gave her a hopeless shrug.
"We weren't watching our six," Gotou agreed. "We were too focused on what we thought our target was that we flew right into a trap."
"Maybe you four did," Alvarez indicated them with his hand. "But Nxar and I smelled a trap ten klicks off." He grinned a little at the vocal scoffs he received in return.
Nxar tilted his head, twitching an ear as he frowned at Alvarez. "But you would have been vaped as well if I neglected to share my data with you in preparation for the incoming MFEs," he said pointedly, and Alvarez deflated slightly.
"I think the point here," Hazama said, "is that we all really suck at communicating with our wings." He smacked Gotou's boots and, with a long-suffering groan, Gotou dropped his feet from the table's top. "We aren't working as a team, either. Not in wings and not in flights."
"It was only me and Nxar in our run, we didn't even have a full flight."
"That's not - that's not exactly my point, Alvarez."
"If the whole squadron was up there, we could have communicated the danger," Peshk said. "Fed our scanners back to the others and cleared the way for them to achieve the objective."
"Who says we can't do that now?"
Everyone looked at Nxar, who had a thoughtful look on his face. Grayson looked around. "Whose MFEs are being used for Three Flight's run?"
Alvarez pointed to himself. "Ours. And the Lieutenant's, too, since they didn't fly with us for this exercise." He got a suspicious look on his face. "Why? "
"I think I know what Five's getting at," Gotou said, standing up. "You have a plan?"
"It depends," Grayson said. "How good are you at distractions?"
"Huh," Leifsdottir said, and then didn't say anything else.
James glanced over to where she sat at the monitoring station. The final two wings of MFEs had just launched, the pilots reporting green and having been given their exercise instructions, and it was the first time that Leif had said anything other than to report as normal. That ... was cause for concern. "What is it?"
"There have been twenty-nine anomalous data transfers since we began our exercise this morning, so I monitored the shortwave transmissions. Eleven of them were simply family radio chatter on prohibited channels, thirteen were downloads of explicit pornography via unauthorized wireless devices-"
"Leif. "
"The final five broadcasts came from our flight hangar in the last five minutes," Leifsdottir concluded, unperturbed.
"From ... our flight hangar?" James said, looking over to the security feeds. No one was really monitoring them, as they were grounded and not in any danger.
"They were encoded, burst transmissions." Leifsdottir began to type quickly, focusing on the data. "Four comm transmissions and one sensor package. I can have it decrypted in thirty seconds."
Oh . "No, that won't be necessary," James said, returning his attention to the sensors. "I think this strafing run might be a little more exciting."
Noor opened the comm frequency between the four MFEs flying in formation. "Three Flight, everyone clear?"
"Package downloaded and delivered, Nine," Ten reported in.
"How are we going to split Gray Wing?"
"We're not, Eleven." Noor looked at his radar, the sensor package already overlaying his own data. The friendly that had been earmarked as Gray One by Five's data was somewhere above them. "Eleven, Twelve, you take the drones trailing Gray One. We'll cover you; then we'll deal with Gray Two."
"Copy That, Nine."
Carson and Lujay's MFEs zipped over Noor's to take the lead as the Red Lion suddenly dove in front of them, trailed by a net full of drones. Just as the briefing notes from Three and Five's sensor data had said, the net disintegrated and the drones spread, pulled along by the backwash of the Red Lion's thrusters. "Engaging drone targets," Eleven reported, and the two MFEs zeroed in on the drone swarm.
"Two unidentified unfriendlies on radar," Ten reported. "Seven o'clock, coming in hot."
"Let's give them a warm welcome, Ten," Noor said, glancing to his radar. "On my mark, break and engage." The proximity alert spun down as the Mark-1's got into range. "Three, two - mark!"
Ares Nine and Ten rolled, dropping off Twelve and Eleven's tail and splitting off. Immediately the two enemy MFEs followed, each tagging one of the pilots. Nine's target lock screamed as he juked his fighter, narrowly missing the spray of low-intensity fire. He stomped a rudder pedal and yanked the flight stick, spiraling the MFE upward and daring his pursuit to follow in a tight corkscrew. If they wanted a demonstration of his evasive maneuvers, then they were going to get one.
Shiro looked over the training report and laughed. "They circumvented the training exercise?" he said, reading over the scores. "That explains how a single wing obliterated all the training drones in one pass." He was seated behind his makeshift desk, and although the tiny office hadn't had a lot of furniture in it to begin with, it was empty save now for the desk, the computer and the chair Shiro currently occupied. "Very well done, I think."
James nodded his head once, although he didn't look pleased. "I didn't prohibit them from discussing the exercise after its completion, although maybe I should have."
"Well, even if it was an unintended consequence, the end result was some well-orchestrated teamwork and thinking outside the box in order to circumvent the exercise in the first place. Not a bad result, either way." He put the data pad down on his desk and cracked his neck, and then looked up at James, who was still frowning. "Somehow, I don't think you're too happy about it."
"It wasn't the original goal of the training exercise," he said, and then sighed. "I want to put three of them on report, they broke into the top-level encrypted channels to transmit the message in the first place."
"Did anyone get hurt?" Shiro asked .
"No, sir."
"Then I don't think that's necessary. Besides, the poor showing for the first few wings is punishment enough, until they level out their scores I'm sure that they're buying a lot of drinks for their fellows." Shiro leaned in his chair as the door to his office opened, and then he sighed and said, "don't bring that thing in here again, Lance."
Lance was still in his Paladin armor, and he was carrying one of Pidge's drones in his arms. Outside of an MFE the drone was roughly the size of a medium dog and probably weighed a decent chunk of change, not that James had fiddled with the Olkari technology.
"I'm keeping this one," Lance announced, and then looked around before realizing that there wasn't any place to set the thing down in Shiro's office. "Where'd your couch go? Did you finally decide to get it cleaned? I told Keith you should get it cleaned, who knows who did what on it before you two started-" Lance's attention drifted across James, and he abruptly stopped, mid-sentence. "Oh. Hey, James."
"Lance," Shiro said, with a long-suffering sigh. "Again, with that thing?"
"I dunno, I thought I'd get the drone working now that it's been shot to pieces and the kids could have it. Maybe get a vidcomm installed and then they can have as much Uncle Lance time as they want." Lance shrugged as well he could still holding the drone in his arms.
James eyed Lance slightly, unsure of what part to address. "Thank you for your help with the training exercises today," he said.
"Don't mention it," Lance said cheerfully. "Red was getting anxious being grounded constantly, it was nice to get out and let her stretch her legs for a bit. Not that we did much other than fly circles around the MFEs," he added. "Ryan and Nadia got to do all the fun stuff. Maybe next time we could sortie, that would be fun." He huffed and hauled the drone up, balancing it against the corner of Shiro's desk. Shiro just looked at him. "Where's Keith?"
"I haven't seen him," Shiro said. "I was in the middle of something here, Lance."
James shook his head. "That's okay, sir, I think I got your point. I need to get to work, anyway, Leif and the others are waiting on me." He saluted Shiro, and after a moment Shiro nodded, dismissing him; and he watched James excuse himself out the door.
"Huh," Lance said, folding his arms atop the drone, still balanced between his body and the edge of Shiro's desk. He looked from the door to Shiro. "Can't believe he still doesn't realize you and Keith are boning."
Shiro flushed red. "Lance."
"What? It's true. Either that or you're sleeping together in the same bed and not hitting that, which would be tragic." Lance tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I should ask Keith."
"Lance, please get out of my office. I do have actual work to do."
Lance shrugged and hauled the drone back into his arms. "Just keep an eye on him, that's all I'm saying," he said. "James totally has a thing for Keith, just look at the way he twitches whenever Keith gets mentioned."
"James has a thing for Keith?" Shiro said, and looked back to the door, a frown crossing his features. "You sure?"
"Hey, am I ever wrong?" Lance said cheerfully, and when he realized Shiro was giving him a flat look, added, "Don't answer that. Either he's got a thing for Keith or it's a thing for you, and Mr. Chain-of-Command doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would go all-in on fraternization but hey, who am I to judge? Anyway, gotta go find Hunk, he promised he'd help me reprogram this beast." Lance wiggled slightly in place, like he was considering trying to shift the drone's weight to one arm to give Shiro a wave, changed his mind, and instead hauled the tech out the door.
Shiro stared as the door closed behind Lance, and then let out a long breath, running his hand through his hair before returning his attention to the data on his screen.
Three days, until launch.
